Because of this practice I assumed that any uses of our invention were protected after the application was filed, else we would have had to wait until after the patent was granted before disclosing to customers.
Your wording was that the 'announcements are protected' which could mean a few things. What is actually the case is that the
invention and the associated patent rights are protected being lost by a public announcement or pubic use. It was likely the international patent rights that your attorneys were worried about being lost. Under US law, there used to be a 1 year grace period protecting against loss of rights by public disclosure. US law on this has changed very recently, but you do need to file before anyone else does.
Under US law, once an application is filed, and then publishes 18 months later, there is a limited right to pursue damages arising after the publication date assuming that the patent does issue. But that right has some important restrictions[1], and the recovery is limited to a royalty payment. By contrast, after the patent issues, the patentee can prevent usage of his invention, and can recover much more extensive damage awards. I am not aware of any circumstance where pre-issue damages have been awarded by a US court.
Outside of the US, protection is strictly based on activity that occurs after the patent issues.
[1] The most important restriction was that you could not modify the patent claims before issue without losing the right to pursue pre-issue damages. But the vast majority of issued patents require modifications to the claims prior to issue.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass